Microsoft Partner Top 50 Movers and Shakers: SEO Leaders
And just like that, another month passes us by. As summers go, it’s been a damp one. To awaken us from our damp stupor then, let’s shake things up with a slightly different look at this month’s Microsoft Partner Top 50 Movers and Shakers: the SEO Leaders.
We use a number of factors to determine the standings of our Top 50 – from content quality to social engagement. It all adds up to give a better understanding of how successful a company’s approach to marketing is. One of the key metrics taken into account is search engine optimisation (SEO). Everything that helps your website rank more highly on search engines is included in here.
But what makes for a good SEO performance? How do you boost your rankings? And is SEO worth it? We spoke to some of the partners with the best SEO scores in the Top 50 to find out.
How QorusDocs built their SEO foundation
QorusDocs is a proposal management software company, intent on streamlining the proposal process for businesses around the world. They’re currently in a solid 22nd place in our Top 50 and have the second highest SEO score of any of the partners.
We spoke to Jennifer Tomlinson, EVP of Marketing at QorusDocs and asked for the best search engine optimisation techniques. She responded:
“I’m a big believer in SEO and PPC in general, so we invested in a specialized performance marketing function that helps us navigate the ever-changing rules.”
Qorus rebranded to QorusDocs in April 2021. The company domain had always been Qorusdocs.com, so making the move to a standardised name and domain helped solidify the brand. This meant building a new website that is kept to current navigation and UX best practices.
“This really helped us set a new foundation for growth in SEO and with our PPC efforts…standardising on brand really helps everything function better.”
Jennifer emphasised the importance of taking a holistic approach, not just focussing on traffic or conversion rates on the website, but the number of conversations and conversions across all digital and social advertising.
“We closely monitor our SEO reports and advertising data to optimise, not just for great traffic but also for valuable conversions… This is how we gauge whether we are doing a good job each month with our investment in these areas.”
Consistency is key for LS Retail
LS Retail currently sit 41st in the Top 50 rankings, and with a solid 81.1 score in SEO, they’re in the higher echelons when it comes to search engine optimisation techniques. We reached out to Eloise Freygang, CMO at LS Retail to hear how they are improving their search performance and driving leads:
“During the past years, we have consistently worked on our website, with beautiful webpages and a clean, effective user experience that is easily discoverable in search. Also, we have put a lot of effort into driving traffic to our website, and the results are mostly due to the quality of the content that we produce.”
As Eloise also mentions, it isn’t possible to build a brand’s trust and credibility overnight. In the world of SEO, just like in real life, building a solid base of reliability takes time and effort, there aren’t any shortcuts.
“We have been steadily increasing organic traffic thanks to improvements and optimisation techniques applied to our own website, and other initiatives to improve our site's popularity, relevance, trustworthiness and authority”
This improvement in SEO also goes hand in hand with PPC. LS Retail continues to steadily increase paid search year after year, with a large effort going into creating and optimizing campaigns to increase lead generation. Eloise also spoke about the importance of content SEO:
“Content marketing is a cornerstone of our SEO efforts. We focus on quality and value rather than quantity, but we still produce and release a steady amount of new content in the form of blogs, product videos, white papers, customer stories and videos, web pages, and campaigns with third party thought leaders.”
Beyond this, social media marketing has proved to be an invaluable tool in LS Retail’s growth, reach, and brand recognition strategy. Paid campaigns on LinkedIn and Facebook have been key to some of the impressive results they’ve seen.
How Chorus stay ahead with SEO
Chorus are also at the head of the course when it comes to SEO. Lisa Treasure, Head of Marketing, talks us through their approach and what benefits the team has seen as a result of their search engine optimisation techniques.
“SEO is a significant component of our digital marketing strategy. A few key ways we ensure good SEO performance is to focus on great content, continuous optimisation and technical SEO.”
Lisa and the team know that keyword research and the right meta titles and descriptions are all vital, but what it all boils down to is creating content that people find valuable and engaging.
“We focus on creating articles and webpages that answer our audience’s questions and link to relevant resources, which naturally leads to increased backlinks, conversions and a higher domain authority”
Although great content is a crucial to achieving good SEO, continual input and other ‘On-Page’ SEO work is still required. Lisa expressed the importance of technical SEO practices:
“We have a range of analytics and SEO tools in place (e.g. Google Analytics, Moz) to track performance and optimise pages, using SEO best practices such as optimised page titles and meta descriptions, compressed images with alt tags, and good internal/external linking”
Getting the basics right is crucial for any SEO expert. It’s important to continually check to make sure theses benchmarks are being met. This ensures that all the hard work you put into your content is worthwhile.
“We make sure we review and optimise areas such as our site structure, XML sitemap, site speed, mobile usability, and we crawl for errors and fix them so that our site remains optimised.”
Check out the Microsoft Partner Top 50 and see how you compare
How does your search engine performance compare to these SEO leaders? Need help making your pages rank more highly? Looking for a hand with SEO optimised content? Get in touch and we’ll see how we can help.
Keep checking our continuously updated Top 50 Microsoft Partners to see how you and other partners are doing. To be one of the top-ranking Microsoft partners our list, you just need a good plan of action – a thoughtful strategy, a fool-proof schedule, and the resources (i.e. people with the right skills) to carry it out consistently. If you need help with any of your digital marketing, get in contact and we’ll be happy to help.
The Microsoft Partner Top 50 Movers and Shakers for July
July was a busy month for us here at Fifty Five and Five. Microsoft blessed us with a whole host of exciting announcements at their annual partner conference, Inspire; the team began returning to the office as restrictions in England started to ease (we even added some new office plants); and we also welcomed a new Writer to the team.
The hustle and bustle never stops apparently – and we quite like it that way! So, it will come as no surprise to you that our all-digital Microsoft Partner Top 50 also saw some significant movement among partners in July’s scores on the doors. Shall we take a look?
July’s Top Movers and Shakers
We’ll start by highlighting some of the great work demonstrated by four Microsoft partners as they made some impressive gains in this month’s Top 50. Those partners are:
- Aptify
Aptify made the biggest leap in July’s Top 50, moving up 76 places to rank #26 at the time of this blog post. Now that’s an accomplishment to be proud of. Great work, Aptify!
Founded in 1993, Aptify has years of experience providing powerful, flexible and comprehensive Association and Membership Management Software solutions globally.
- Adatis
Similarly, Adatis made significant gains, moving up 72 places to rank #21 at the end of July – just behind Aptify. Still, this level of growth a seriously impressive feat. A huge well done.
Adatis are a specialist Data Analytics Consultancy and trusted Microsoft partner, who help organisations unlock the power and value from their data to enable them to improve business performance, better serve and engage customers, empower employees, find efficiencies, and remain compliant.
- Blue Horseshoe
Blue Horseshoe entered the Top 50 for the very first time at the end of June. Since then, they’ve consistently ranked in the top 45, ranking as high as #23 and now ranking around #30. Considering they’ve were ranking around #100 at the start of 2021, you can colour us impressed.
Blue Horseshoe empowers business transformation where it counts most. They help companies define and plan their enterprise strategy, connect and collaborate with business applications, and optimize and execute supply chain operations.
- Concurrency
Again, Concurrency were ranking in the #100s at the start of 2021, and only entered Top 50 for the first time in May. They have since been climbing the ranks, and have now been ranking in the Top 30 since the start of July. Very solid work.
Founded in 1989, Concurrency is a business and technology professional services firm driving technology innovation and organizational change management.
Encore on a “culture of content contributors”
The aim of this blog series is to provide insight for Microsoft Partners to help them achieve marketing success. Encore have consistently demonstrated their marketing excellence in the Microsoft Partner Top 50 – so we spoke to their VP of Marketing, Natalie Armstrong, to find out the secret behind their top-notch content.
Hi Natalie. Congrats on shooting into the Top 15! Tell us – what is your secret weapon for such great quality content?
“We’ve created a culture of content contributors at Encore. All our team members feel a sense of responsibility to share their knowledge in their individual areas of expertise. The ongoing collaboration with our inhouse SMEs has enabled us to sustain such a high volume of relevant and high-quality blog content over the last 3+ years.”
Great stuff. How do you keep your content driving people back?
“As well as sourcing new content we also spend a considerable amount of effort reviewing and updating older popular pieces of content that drive conversions. In addition to prioritizing our time and energy on optimizing content and users page experiences we dedicate time and budget dollars on our marketing technology and using it to help drive results and dictate our next decisions.”
Thanks, Natalie!
Where do you rank?
That’s it for the July edition of our Top 50 Movers and Shakers blog. Bookmark our continuously updated Top 50 Microsoft Partners to see how you and other Microsoft partners rank in the month ahead. And hey – you could even feature in August’s post!
At Fifty Five and Five, we help technology companies grow their business, drive brand awareness and achieve their marketing goals. If you need help with your digital marketing, get in touch with the team today.
The Microsoft Partner Top 50 movers and shakers for June
The month of June is one of our favourites here at Fifty Five and Five. For starters, it’s officially summer, Pride is all month long and the sport of tennis drops into our lives for two weeks thanks to Wimbledon. And this June, we’ve also been enjoying the European Football Championships. What’s not to love?
So, in our mad summer haze of love and sport, we wanted to give a shoutout to a couple of Microsoft Partner Top 50 table success stories:
- Rencore
- Centric Consulting
If you are unfamiliar with it, the Microsoft partner Top 50 is where we and our exclusive algorithm position top ranking Microsoft partners according to the strength of their digital marketing. We look at their inbound marketing output: their website, blog and social media presence.
Want a comprehensive look at the Top 50 up until now?
Just in case you missed it, we covered the first half of the year (what, already!?) in a recent article. You can read it right here.
Two partners in profile
For a special June shoutout, we look at two top ranking Microsoft partners who have been consistently in our table and continue to either punch above their weight, and/or market themselves in line with their company values to great effect. Competing in a crowded field with much larger organisations is not easy, but Rencore do it with aplomb. Meanwhile, Centric Consulting are masters of building a brand voice.
Rencore
Headquartered in Munich, Germany and consistently growing since 2013, Rencore are experts when it comes to Microsoft 365 governance, “empowering everyone to reach business goals without friction.” The business is focused on helping customers stay in control of their Microsoft 365, Teams, SharePoint Online and Azure investments via the Rencore Platform solution.
For a team of 25 people in 2018, they pack a serious marketing punch and are a tremendously successful example of what good inbound marketing can do. At the time of writing they are in 11th place on our list, ahead of much larger brands like Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Rackspace, not to mention rival (and former Top 50 kingpin) ShareGate).
Rencore have the classic inbound marketing strategy patter down. Their website is clear and concise. They know their audience and the kind of content they will appreciate. At times, their content can be highly technical, but they are gifted at balancing being experts with being digestible – and dare we say... fun?
"We have an incredibly talented in-house team who work in a well-fostered, creative environment for producing new content ideas and designs and tailor them to our marketing channels and campaigns. In busy periods, we reach out to Fifty Five and Five to help support that effort, and they fit in seamlessly."
- Matthias Einig, CEO and Co-founder at Rencore
Centric Consulting
Based in 14 locations across the United States, Centric Consulting provide top quality digital, business and technology consulting primarily focusing on business resilience and continuity. Something that’s ever more important in this day and age.
A company that began as an idea between three friends and grew organically from their living room before ever setting foot in an office, Centric are another terrific digital disruption success story. And their essential approach of “enjoying the people you work with, having fun and doing great work” is something that infiltrates its way into their marketing, too. Their position at 44th place, out of tens of thousands of partners, speaks to this core set of values. They have a top SEO score coupled with an almost equally excellent content score. Hop on to their website and be immediately engaged.
"For Centric Consulting, great content is rooted in three fundamentals. First, be timely and relevant, which includes paying close attention to the needs of customers and the market in general. Second, provide unique, helpful perspectives that provide value – arm your audience with information to elevate their work. And third, apply marketing fundamentals to everything – optimize all content for search, leverage a variety of marketing channels, and have a strategic plan that guides all activity."
- Misty Walsh, National Marketing Director at Centric Consulting
Check out the Microsoft Partner Top 50 and see how you compare
Keep checking our continuously updated Top 50 Microsoft Partners to see how you and other partners are doing. To be one of the top-ranking Microsoft partners our list, you just need a good plan of action – a thoughtful strategy, a fool-proof schedule, and the resources (i.e. people with the right skills) to carry it out consistently. If you need help with any of your digital marketing, get in contact and we’ll be happy to help.
Microsoft Partner Top 50 – the highlights at halftime
We’re more than halfway through 2021, so, we thought it was the perfect time to take a breather, do some mid-season analysis, and look at the current state of play in our ongoing digital 2020/2021 Microsoft Partner Top 50 table. The Top 50 is where we and our proprietary algorithm rank partners based on their digital marketing.
Today, we’ll be casting a keen pundit’s eye over the movers and shakers, the surprises and the solid bets, and deliver some commentary on some of the partners that have done particularly well – and how they’ve done it.
Big risers in the league table
To kick off, let’s take a gander at some Microsoft partners who’ve made the biggest jump in the rankings this year. These partners have performed stunningly since October/November 2020, and that’s been reflected in how well their positions have improved since then.
This partner, specialising in intelligent process automation, began outside the Top 130 back in Autumn 2020. But since then, they’ve been in and out of Top 10 at the turn of the year and have been Top 5 now since February. At the time of writing, Bizagi is the highest scorer for content, with an excellent, regularly updated blog, wide array of valuable downloadable resources, and more.
IT services firm Catapult started well outside the Top 130 and have made steady improvement throughout. They’re now a regular Top 30 performer, ranking highly for SEO thanks to their highly optimised digital presence. They draw valuable traffic thanks to a broad scope of focus that targets many different customer industries and service areas, with all the right search touchpoints covered.
“This a great example of speaking to an increasingly business-focused audience.” – Catapult Systems’ Top 50 profile
TechQuarters, an IT support and Office 365 migrations company, had stayed mostly outside the Top 100 until recently, although they occasionally dipped into it. However, April saw a monumental leap, as they landed in the Top 10 and haven’t left it since. TechQuarters are also scoring very highly for SEO right now and are clearly winning big with both the search engines and visitors to their website.
Top 5 ever-presents
Nintex, NTT Ltd. and LiveTiles have been in the Top 5 since November 8th, with high all-round performance across our categories throughout the entire period. Each of these partners has long been well-known for their diligently curated digital presence, and we’re pleased to see them going from strength to strength.
Elsewhere among the top-ranking Microsoft partners, SkyKick has been in the Top 10 every week since the Top 50 was launched. A very strong showing from the cloud management software provider, and we’d attribute some of that to their spot-on tone-of-voice as well as brilliant work in content and search.
“Clear, consistent and full of value, they are doing inbound marketing the way it was meant to be done.” – SkyKick’s Top 50 profile
Always in the Top 20
The following partners have consistently remained in the Top 20. Many are familiar faces who have performed well in previous years’ Top 50s. They’ve outdone themselves this time, too:
harmon.ie – great social media presence and content
Pyramid Analytics – one of the very highest SEO scores
Veeam – engaging, detailed and valuable content
Sherweb – clear, compelling brand identity and value proposition
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) – excellent content and social channels
Automated Intelligence – expertise displayed compellingly and credibly
“Storytelling is crucial to generating a following on social media, and HPE are better at it than most.” – Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Top 50 profile
Special mentions
As our roundup draws to a close, we’d like to give a shoutout to a range of partners who have solidly stayed within the Microsoft Partner Top 50 all this time. There are too many to put a spotlight on individually, but each and every one has done great work cementing their positions so far:
| ENow | Nuix |
| Modality Systems | BitTitan |
| Trend Micro | Hitachi Solutions |
| Talk Think Do | Cyber Ark |
| Cognizant | Infragistics |
| Air IT | Rackspace |
| Qorus | Beezy |
| Okta | ThirdSpace |
| KnowledgeWave | Nutanix |
There’s still everything to play for in the Microsoft Partner Top 50
We hope you’ve enjoyed our roundup. If you’re a Microsoft Partner and you weren’t featured, don’t worry – the game is still underway. Who knows what the next few months will bring? You could well be one of the top-ranking Microsoft partners in the Top 10 or even Top 5 next time we give our commentary.
Meanwhile, keep checking our continuously updated Top 50 Microsoft Partners to see how you and other partners are doing. Good luck!
How’s your B2B marketing? Introducing our Top Movers and Shakers blog series
Welcome to our new monthly series of blogs celebrating the very best B2B marketing in the Microsoft Partner Network. Fifty Five and Five’s Top 50 Report, first launched in 2014, ranks the digital marketing efforts of Microsoft partners, analysing and assessing four key criteria: content, website, technology, and SEO.
Now existing in digital form, the Top 50 runs in real time, updated on a weekly basis, to give you a better, more accurate picture of how effective your B2B marketing is. This provides a great way to measure your success and to benchmark against other Microsoft partners, including competitors.
Use our site as a stepping stone to success
Social: Looking for ideas on how to improve your social content? Why not see who has got the best social score this week and check out what’s lighting up LinkedIn right now.
Shout about success: Have you run a recent rebranding campaign that you’re really proud of? See if it has bumped up your score.
Measure your outcomes: Looking for another way to measure success for the next board meeting? You can point to your standing in our Top 50. We won’t mind. It’s what it’s there for.
Are you a mover? A shaker? ...a candlestick-maker?
Obviously, B2B marketing success is ultimately determined by leads and conversion rates. But rising to the top of our league table is an extra accolade. Just ask Bizagi, who currently sit in the number one spot. But it’s not only about who’s at the top. As we rank up to 250,000 Microsoft partners in our weekly updates, everyone who gets into the Top 50 is doing something special to get there. And these partners deserve to be recognised and celebrated.
This new blog series will focus on the movers and shakers within the Top 50, a dynamic look at what is going on in the world of Microsoft partner marketing.
Each blog will have a slightly different focus, and we won’t stick to a formula. Sometimes we might highlight the top 10 biggest movers or the top 10 overall scores for the month, but other times we might simply want to highlight amazing campaigns that have caught our eye.
Why benchmarking is so important for B2B marketing
It’s never been more important to strategically plan your marketing – and benchmarking has a vital role to play in this. You need a clear overview of your strengths and weaknesses, alongside those of your competitors. With data-driven insights, sourced from our digital Top 50, you’ll be able to track your marketing progress and keep an eye on the latest marketing trends as they develop. We can help you to stay ahead of the curve and realise your ambitions.
May’s Top Movers and Shakers
We’re going to kick this series off by highlighting the great work of the three partners who have enjoyed the greatest rise in this month’s Top 50. They are:
- TechQuarters
TechQuarters had hovered just outside the Top 100 for a while, but finally earned their place in the Top 50 at the end of March. Now they’re in the Top 10 – what a great achievement.
TechQuarters are a Microsoft Cloud Partner who work with forward-thinking organisations who are looking for reliable IT Support and want to modernise their systems.
- CMIT Solutions
It’s a similar story for CMIT Solutions who had been hovering around the Top 50 and now sit in 38th place, after a few months of solid, consistent marketing. Nice one.
CMIT Solutions provide essential IT services such as remote work support, cybersecurity and IT support.
- Enhansoft
Not quite as much of a meteoric rise as the other two, but still an impressive jump. Enhansoft have moved up from near 90th place and have become a regular in the Top 50 this month. As of writing, they are currently standing strong in 39th place.
Enhansoft give organisations the tools to take control your IT asset inventory, helping customers in the Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager community.
TechQuarters on “fresh content constantly”: an interview
In this blog series, we hope to provide value-adding insight and analysis directly from the Movers and Shakers themselves. This month, Fifty Five and Five’s James Woods sat down with Elly Smith, Marketing Manager at TechQuarters, to discuss how TechQuarters approach B2B marketing.
Hi Elly, congratulations on your current Top 10 position. What is the key to your marketing success?
“At TechQuarters, our key channels and focus areas for marketing are organic SEO and paid ads. We approach both with the mantra, ‘‘fresh content constantly’. For us, this means weekly blogs, videos across social media almost every day and updating content and advertising on a continual basis. The way we got to this place is by sticking to a plan in terms of quantity, analysing the results and learning from our mistakes.”
What have you found works best for you?
“We’ve found that short, sharp snippets of relevant information are what works; especially in an industry with new developments and information being released all the time. One of our goals is to be a source of continual education for both the partner and customer networks on our social channels. This was affirmed by our win of ‘Cloud Visionary of the Year’ at the last UK Cloud Awards. Spending a week crafting an article or video may mean you miss the opportunity to be one of the first to report on the latest trends, so speed is of the essence.”
How important are benchmarking and data-driven insights in developing your marketing strategy?
“Our process is definitely based on good groundwork and analysis over the years – knowing our audience, knowing what converts and also knowing our in-house capabilities. Now that we have these mastered, we‘re not afraid to try new things, as we know we have a good basis to jump off from.”
Until next time…
That’s all for the first of our Top 10 Movers and Shakers blogs. We hope to see you here next month for another celebration of Microsoft Partner marketing. Or perhaps you’ll feature as one of our Movers and Shakers next time around. We’ll have to wait and see.
At Fifty Five and Five, we help technology companies grow their business, drive brand awareness and achieve their marketing goals. To learn more about B2B marketing best practices for Microsoft partners, get in touch with the team today.
Is Microsoft Teams the future of all business collaboration?
In episode #4 of our podcast, we discuss a recent change in the way businesses interact with Microsoft collaboration software. Once upon a time, Microsoft collaboration technology centered around SharePoint, Outlook and Yammer. Now Teams is becoming a ‘base of operations’ for the way people work, with SharePoint and Outlook left out in the cold.
We’re joined by Lesley Crook, a Microsoft MVP and Modern Workplace Consultant for Symity Ltd. Symity specialise in Teams meeting rooms and telephony services, and Lesley has plenty to say on: The reasons for this change in collaboration habits, Teams’ potential as a ‘base of operations’, the limitations of Teams and the potential for the future.
Is this the end of the world...run on spreadsheets?
In episode #3 of our podcast, we ask - Is it time for businesses to end their relationship with spreadsheets and ‘start seeing other people’? We chat to Mark Bodger and Chris Harman from ICit Business Intelligence. A pair of industry veterans in the world of financial and operational planning, who are here to tell you to end your monogamous relationship with spreadsheets once and for all or face the fallout from being a tech laggard in your industry. Listen now.
The 4 pillars of a quality website: examples from the experts
Your website is a shop window to your business and a cornerstone of your marketing strategy. In our article, we are going to tell you what we think makes up a great website. And we’ve cobbled together examples from some of the leading B2B technology organisations to show you examples of a quality website in action.
These organisations are leading Microsoft partners who are successfully putting the qualities of a great website build into action. We’ve taken these examples from our Top 50 Microsoft Partners website, which ranks partners on the quality of their inbound marketing strategies.
So, if you’re currently designing or building your website, and could do with some advice or inspiration, this is a good place to start.
Pillar 1: Functionality and purpose
When we talk about the functionality of a website, we mean the functions that allow a visitor to achieve what you want or intend them to achieve. Whether it’s to buy a product or request a demo, you need a website that allows your audience to complete a journey and respond to your call of action. So, make sure to include a form if you want your visitor to submit information. There should be simple and clear navigation, intuitive enough to allow your visitor to find their way around and consume the information you’ve created for them.
Nintex
Nintex, a global leader in business process automation, provide a good example of a website with strong functionality. As we mentioned above, it’s important for a website to be easy to navigate, contain quality content and include clear calls to action. And Nintex ticks all these boxes. The layout of the site is well executed considering the volume of solutions and content that they want to showcase.
Along with good practical functionality (and a clear purpose), it’s also important to convey who you are and what you value as a company.
One of the key takeaways from Nintex’s website, that I particularly like, is their positioning of people across the site. It’s important that your brand echoes or compliments your product or service. For Nintex, who operate in the world of process automation (and the potential negative headlines of automation replacing people), it’s vital that they put people at the centre of their site. This idea of combining the practical elements of website build with branding and ethos, can be a tricky balancing act – but Nintex pull it off very well.
Pillar 2: A clear user journey
There’s more to a website than a homepage. The mark of great design and the right build is the user journey that the visitor is taken on. As we mentioned when discussing functionality, clear navigation is key to this journey. You want your visitors to understand what you are offering. By making it easy to access the various areas of the site, you improve the user journey, keep visitors on the site longer and provide them with the expertise they are looking for.
Veeam
It is clear from the outset that Veeam are a collective of IT experts who are speaking to a specific audience (namely, IT professionals). They have a clear user journey laid out that begins with ‘how to’ video content, ends with a ‘buy’ call to action and contains a free trial and expert support along the way. That’s about as straight forward a buying journey should be, and Veeam do it well.
The other take away from this website is the clear sense of Veeam’s expertise. Extensive, detailed and valuable content is packed into this website and speaks to a specific audience, and in turn, leads them on the right journey.
Pillar 3: Quality content
Content is the key to any great marketing campaign – and it should be central to your website. When content is effectively, we should see succinct and concise language that avoids relying on technical or business jargon. The best content is clear and to the point and tells the reader something, whether that be marketing advice, a ‘how to’ guide or thought leadership.
ShareGate
ShareGate pride themselves on making the Microsoft Cloud easier to use for organisations of all sizes. This focus is reflected in their website—in the look and feel, language and navigation. ShareGate are clear about what they do and why their customers choose them.
This simple and helpful ethos is consistent across their design, and is also consistent across their blog and social media profiles. Their content is always helpful, articulated in a clear and colourful manner.
Pillar 4: Consistent brand and design
Your website needs to be visually appealing if you want to engage your audience. That means your designers need to think about the right colours, the visual structure of the site and how it all works together to produce branding that defines and sets your business apart. The language you use should fit your audience. If your visitors are IT developers, you can use more technical language. If they are business leaders, you should focus on the business benefits of your product or service. And remember, consistency across your site is essential.
LiveTiles
Getting your tone of voice ‘right’ can be tricky. It takes is a clear understanding of your audience and their needs. The LiveTile tone of voice is spot on, right from the first words on their website to the latest blog they’ve posted on social media. It's a combination that shows these guys aren’t messing around. Clear, consistent and full of value, their website is a great example of how effective branding can differentiate you from your competitors.
How we did it. The inside scoop on the Microsoft Partner Top 50
Episode #2 of our podcast is about the Microsoft Partner Top 50. For the last six years, Fifty Five and Five have produced an annual inbound marketing excellence report, celebrating the marketing efforts of organisations across the Microsoft Partner Network. In this episode we speak to Fifty Five and Five’s Barnaby Ellis (Head of Creative) and Stephen Reilly (Head of Content), about the release of the new Top 50 website, the transformation from hard copy report to a digital website. We also discuss the origins of the Top 50, from a piece of marketing in its own right to a solution that helps partners of all sizes improve their inbound marketing.
Microsoft Partner Top 50 edition with Nick Rameka of LiveTiles
In this first ever episode of our podcast we speak to Nick Rameka, the CMO at LiveTiles, about brand evolution, pandemic priorities and marketing advice for other Microsoft partners. LiveTiles are a maverick marketing voice in the Microsoft Partner Network, and we were delighted to get his take on the marketing landscape in such a tumultuous year. Nick reveals the content marketing trends he sees coming around the corner and what remote working practices we can expect to stick as we try to put 2020 behind us.